When one of the wolves, Melpomene, takes over the running of the brothel, there is hope that things might change. But for Melpomene “the whole world is a whorehouse” and she presses the other wolves to work even harder. Earning more tips is the only route to freedom. Sparrow is a story of an orphaned and nameless boy brought up in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the years of the Roman Empire. Others call him simply Pusus (boy), Little One, or Mouse. But he likes to call himself Sparrow. He doesn’t know where he comes from or who his parents are. Raised by wolves in an environment not suited for a small child. Wolves are prostitutes in a brothel named after muses. Their world is everything he knows. They are all he has, and he learns from them. Tender Euterpe and her lover, down-to-earth cook, ambitious Melpomene, their bodyguard, rough Audo: they are his family. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the women who have been his whole world.

More importantly, I wanted to tell a truthful story about the lived experience of Roman slavery. There are no surviving first person accounts by those enslaved by Romans, as there are by formerly enslaved Americans. In the canon of historical fiction about Rome, very few books take slavery as their main subject, and nearly all of those are about the Spartacus slave revolt. Such revolts in the ancient world were very rare, and I wanted to write about one of the millions who didn’t rebel, but instead struggled to endure under an unforgiving system that was questioned by no one (not even those enslaved). Sparrow is intended to be several stories at once –about a child’s coming of age in impossible circumstances, about the office politics of a Roman brothel, about life on the Roman street, and about the struggle of the enslaved to find love, friendship, and dignity. It is also a slave’s view of the triumph of Christianity and the last years of the Western Roman Empire. Focaria is the most interesting to me because I feel like so much she could’ve been that she wasn’t. That complicated relationship between being a carer for a child, a mother in a sense, but it being forced on you? That love-hate that could’ve been, instead replaced by her being jealous of a child. She spends most of the book being cruel to him, literally attempting to kill him (for something that wasn’t his fault, which she knows wasn't his fault) and then turning around at the end and holding his hand as she skips into the sunset with him? Be for real. Far from Rome in the dying days of the Empire, he lives within the confines of the brothel. Gradually we learn the story of the boy, who calls himself Sparrow, and the stories of the women who form his ‘family’. The novel is narrated by the much older Sparrow, now known as Jacob and living in Britannia.Sparrow is a wonderful novel, but it’s also a visceral and brutal one. The coming of Christianity has brought shame and censure to the lives of the wolves, even though, as Jacob says, “the entire empire is a mosaic of rape and murder and bastardy and forced labour”. Like the very best of novelists engaging with the classical past – Natalie Haynes, Madeline Miller, Mary Renault – Hynes has found a way of making the events of almost 2,000 years ago feel as if they are happening right now, in front of our faces. That’s maybe because, in the sordid, sensual and secretive world he’s writing about, less has changed than we might think. He spends his days listening to stories told by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, running errands for her lover the cook, and dodging the blows of their brutal overseer and the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the women who have been his whole world. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

The cook, Focaria, and one of the prostitutes (or "wolves"), Euterpe, serve as surrogate mothers to little Sparrow. Euterpe is nurturing and gentle, Focaria strict and impatient. The brothel manager, Audo, is brutal to the slaves, but obsequious to the owner of the brothel (and its denizens), Cadilus. The world that Hynes has built is initially confined to the brothel, the kitchen where Sparrow sleeps alongside the cook Focaria, and the herb garden where they forage. Sparrow avoids the tavern, which is full of loud and violent men, and upstairs, where the slave prostitutes, known as wolves, live and ply their trade.

The Sydney Morning Herald

I had heard a lot about this book, but wasn't 100% convinced it would be my cup of tea, I thought it may be a bit too literary for me. I could not have been more wrong. I was super wrapped up in the characters from the very beginning. In a brothel on the Spanish coast during the waning years of the Roman Empire, a young enslaved boy of unknown parentage is growing up. His world is a kitchen, then an herb-scented garden, followed by a loud and dangerous tavern, and finally, the mysterious upstairs where the “wolves” do their business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, dodging the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene.

This, accompanied by scenes like Sparrow walking in on Focaria and Euterpe having sex, which is an interesting choice to introduce their relationship like that. Not that it itself is bad, but the connotations attached considering the already blurred between portraying and pornifying is something to consider.

LoveReading Says

When not being told stories by his beloved 'mother' Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world. The wolves, in particular, are brilliantly drawn, with their shifting alliances and divisions drawing them together and pulling them apart as events imposed on them crush their will or cement their unity accordingly. Finally, Orlando Patterson’s magisterial Slavery and Social Death not only posits a general theory of slavery, but it also compares and contrasts different types of slavery throughout history and across cultures. James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts explores in thrilling detail the different linguistic strategies that the powerful and the powerless use when talking to each other and among themselves. At times, there is a blur between portraying and pornifying scenes. Certain descriptors, interactions and thoughts in these scenes are more reminiscent of a full grown man, rather than a boy. Specifically, in the scene between Melpomene and Sparrow, where she ‘teaches him’ how to be a wolf, the dialogue and physical reactions seem to blur that line, especially lines like “‘Before I answer that,’ she says, laying her warm hand on my thigh, ‘I’m going to do something for you first.’” and “in almost the same place on my body, the silkiest pleasure I've ever felt”. The weakest part of the story was the character of Sparrow himself - even considering the fact that neither he nor the readers know his exact age, I could never tell how old he was supposed to be at any given point. By the time he gets sent “upstairs” to work as a prostitute, he’s described as being at least somewhat sexually mature, so probably around 10ish, but he still thinks like a toddler, always asking dumb questions. “What’s a fugitive, what’s a graveyard”, that sort of thing. Don’t kids normally have their question phase at like 4/5? I can’t remember being this dim when I was 10…

A secret history that teems with the brutality, sensuality, and frailty of life in a decaying empire. Sydney Morning Herald Sparrow is the anti- I, Claudius. I wanted to write about Roman life from below, and I wanted to write a character as far from my own experience as I could get, in this case a Roman slave who didn’t know who his parents were, or even when or where he was born. Nearly all fictional narratives about the ancient world feature famous, usually elite Romans and/or well-known episodes in Roman history, and I wanted to see if I could make life on the Roman street vivid, entertaining, and suspenseful, without recourse to emperors, gladiators, or volcanoes.

Sparrow

Still, Sparrow is a novel worth reading. This novel transports the reader to the brutal times of the Roman Empire. It is a novel about endurance, love, and pain. This is a slower-paced but precise character study of a child slave in the Roman Empire.